


Withdrawal

by catpoop



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon Compliant, M/M, Nightmares, Violence, semi-platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:09:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9579770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catpoop/pseuds/catpoop
Summary: When Shiro has what feels like the weight of the world on his back, it's only normal to expect a few broken vertebrae. He just didn't think it would strike where he hurts the most.





	

**Author's Note:**

> yoo  
> this better not become a goddamn multichap fic i need to stop making so many wips  
> also i stayed up til 3am yesterday writing this my life is a mess

Shiro’s been free from the Galra for only a week, with barely a handful of memories to account for his year-long disappearance, and an alien princess is forcing him to lead a ragtag bunch of not-yet-graduated cadets against the force that’s taken over the universe. The same force that had amputated his arm and left him with a strange robotic prosthetic. Needless to say, Shiro doesn’t take the news very well.

Though it’s not as if he’s inexperienced in leadership – back in his Garrison days, Shiro’s led many a group of fresh-faced cadets through the basics of operating a flight simulator, keeping the kids under control. Most of the time. And he’s made decisions before, sure, just not ones that he imagines he’ll be making in order to fight a galactic empire.

At least Keith is there with him – a familiar face, standing out amongst the other teens – strangers he might’ve seen before in the Garrison. Though there’s Pidge, too, underdeveloped and skinny but almost a mirror image of one of his past friends. He can’t immediately recall their name.

After that rollercoaster of a first day, Keith sneaks into his room, black shirt blending into the shadows.

“Shiro? Shiro, are you awake?”

Of course he is, after a day like this. He responds accordingly.

“Can I get in? Like – uh – old times?”

“Sure.”

By old times he means when Shiro was eighteen and Keith sixteen, and the only obstacles they had in their life were education-related. Shiro still hadn’t found out about the Kerberos mission then. He remembers Keith sleeping over, cuddling into his chest because he _'didn’t have any parents growing up, give me a break!'_ Shiro went along with that excuse, as though he couldn’t see the warm glow on Keith’s face the morning after their first night together. He wouldn’t do something like that for any other of his guy friends, but Keith is an exception, because Keith is energetic, headstrong, determined, and has a habit of sinking into sulky, poorly-concealed slumps at the first mention of parents. It makes Shiro want to hug him and never let go.

And so he does, letting the now-lankier and taller teen to ease under his blankets, settling into his embrace as though he were still naïve and much-younger, and Shiro had two human arms. Keith rubs a thumb over the ragged edge where metal meets flesh.

“Does it hurt?”

“Hurts my eyes to look at it? Yeah. But not really, no.”

Keith snorts at his bad joke. Swallows. Then exhales. “I can’t believe you’re back. Alive. I’d accepted the truth after three months. Guess it’s not the truth now.”

Shiro rubs his prosthetic hand against Keith’s back, glad to see he doesn’t stiffen, or flinch away, or even tell him to stop with that steely yet detached glare of his. Keith’s back feels warm against his palm.

“Yeah.” Shiro replies huskily. “I can’t believe it either. Thanks for not forgetting about me.”

“I couldn’t forget about _you_.”

“Mhm?”

“Mhm.” Keith relaxes further, and Shiro takes that as a sign to get to sleep. They have a busy day tomorrow after all, travelling to alien planets to retrieve giant metal robots. Briefly, he wonders what Coran and Allura are doing, their circadian rhythms running on much longer cycles than theirs, before he drifts off. His thoughts slow to a dull trickle after that, his brain focused solely on matching his heartbeat to Keith’s lazy throb.

Until something grotesque and sagging and waterlogged swipes at him out of nowhere, sharp claws reaching out and clanging on the metal bars between them. Shiro flinches, falling backwards in disbelief and landing hard on a cold concrete floor. He looks behind him, seeing the remnants of a meal on a tray, a length of chain attached to the wall, and … The rest of his surroundings blur out of focus when he tries to look around, something yanking his head back to where the _creature_ is clawing at the bars with a sharp grating noise.

He doesn’t remember much after that, waking with a breathless shudder. Looking at Keith next to him doesn’t slow the pounding in his chest, and Shiro forces himself to _breathe_. 

Keith wakes up eventually, and Shiro puts on a smile, just as he puts on a clear and coherent voice a day later when speaking to the other paladins. They seem impressed, even if he doesn’t help them get closer to forming Voltron. _Keith_ seems impressed, reassured, mumbling his anxieties and _what ifs_ to Shiro before they go to sleep, as he did in the past. Because Shiro can tell him what he needs to hear, can guide him on just what to do to avoid picking yet another fight with a fellow cadet. Keith nods, relaxed, holding on as if Shiro is the only thing anchoring him down, as if Shiro isn’t being startled awake by nightmares every morning. The dreams help him to piece together the past, at least.

And so Shiro holds it in, because that’s what Keith expects from him, and it’s what the other paladins and Allura and Coran expect – for him to be Voltron’s leader, to fall back into his role of Garrison’s golden boy and impress all. He holds it in because it isn’t hurting, not _all_ the time. He enjoys the jokes, the jibes, the friendly training sessions where no one needs to hold back because they think he’s damaged goods.

Of course, it all backfires on him sooner than he expects (he expected never). The Champion is helpless without his Galra arm, of course. He sees the prisoner he’s been paired up with lumber towards him, swinging his plasma flail more to impress the audience than anything. Shiro can already see the path he’s going to take to defeat this enemy – he’s stepped down it many times. He ducks under the first swing, feeling the heat from the plasma sizzle the air above him. Step around, get in close, feint, dislocate the dominant hand (the weapon falls with a clatter), and clean stab through the heart. He can’t always tell where the heart might be located, but a slice through the chest usually gets him close. The anguished scream from his downed opponent melds with the cheers from the audience and Shiro raises his arms despite the fatigue and gore dripping from every pore.

Which is why he doesn’t immediately recognise the sound from outside his mind, not when there’s a cacophony raging inside. He wakes only when Keith sharply knees him in the stomach, gurgling strangely against his chest.

“A-Augh! Fuck, Shiro!”

He opens his eyes to see nothing out of the ordinary, except for Keith wriggling at his side. And then the teen topples backwards off his bed, twitching and clawing at his chest. Shiro blinks at the dark puddle forming under him. Inhale. Exhale. He doesn’t have the time to fucking think, or ask questions. Only to stare at the congealed blood on his right hand, and at the gaping, half-cauterised wound on Keith’s back.

Reflexes dulled with sleep, it takes Shiro a half-second to stare at the figure writhing about and gasping on his bedroom floor before he hoists Keith into his arms, ignoring the way his blood is staining his skin as he takes rapid, stumbling steps towards the room in which they’d first met Allura and Coran. 

The healing pods.

He doesn’t remember screaming, but apparently he makes enough noise for half of the residents of the castle to come rushing to his aid. Coran readies a pod (switching it from cryogenic preservation to rapid tissue-regeneration) as Shiro tries to stem the flow of blood from Keith’s back. He tries not to look at the way the grey pupils dim with each stuttering breath Keith takes, or at the feeble twitches of his lips, as though trying to respond to Shiro’s frantic muttering.

“C’mon Keith, c’mon, _stay with me_.”

“Bandage him up before we put him into the pod.” 

Shiro takes the roll Coran passes to him, nearly incinerating the bandages with his prosthetic hand as he scrabbles at them, trying to unroll enough to wrap around Keith’s midsection. Luckily, the bandages seem to immediately stem the blood once in contact with the wound. Shiro gently sets Keith inside the pod, waving off Pidge’s offer to help.

 _He_ was the one who fucked up in the first place; they have no responsibility to bear the burden for him. He sits down heavily on the ground once Coran has Keith’s vitals running on a monitor, rubbing at tired eyes with his still gore-caked hands.

Keith’s recovery will take a day and a half at most – only a narrow gouge and a few shattered vertebrae. It didn’t look that narrow to Shiro, but then he recalls the chunks of flesh he’d torn out of other prisoners, in a past life.

Shiro is ready to sit there for the entire day and a half until Keith emerges and he can bury a pleading sob into his shoulder. A sob of forgiveness, more than anything. And then unexpectedly, Hunk tugs at his arm, leading him to the bathrooms.

“C’mon, big guy, let’s get you cleaned up first – Keith won’t want to see you like that.”

Shiro grunts, but cleans himself up anyway, watching the water run red down the sink. He returns to his bedroom, changing into a new outfit. The mess he mops up, all the while fighting the urge to vomit. He won’t be able to sleep in here for weeks.

When he returns to the main room with the healing pods, Lance has joined them. Everyone turns to look at him when he enters, demanding answers. Allura is the one to speak up, in a deceptively calm voice.

“What happened, Shiro?”

He isn’t in any mood to explain, but it would be beneficial, he thinks, to sort out this alien thing attached to his stump of a bicep before it hurts anyone else.

“I – uh – I fucking –” He doesn’t have on his leader voice, for once. Or that voice he uses in front of a class of cadets. Even though Pidge doesn’t look a day older than fifteen, Shiro doesn’t correct himself.

“ – I fucking stabbed Keith. In the back.”

“But why?” Allura prompts, after the first wave of shock horror runs through the room. She has her eyes narrowed in suspicion, the slightest hatred directed towards his Galra arm.

“I was having a nightmare – I stabbed this prisoner, in the gladiator arena, on Zarkon’s ship.” Shiro takes a deep breath. “And my hand must’ve turned on in real life, and –” 

He stops, looking in Keith’s direction as though that’s all the explanation they need. Lance looks like he’s itching to ask why Shiro’s hand was in such close proximity to Keith’s back when he was asleep, but doesn’t, for which Shiro is grateful. Whatever their relationship is is irrelevant right now, and will probably cease to exist in a day and a half anyway.

“Is there a way to deactivate your hand?” Allura asks.

“I don’t have a bayard, though.” He’d be helpless without the hand (and a lot more safer to be around, Shiro thinks).

“Deactivate it temporarily. Like when you’re going to bed.”

“Oh.” Shiro looks between Coran and Pidge, and it’s Pidge who leaps first, grabbing his arm with both hands and hauling him away to one of the labs. He lets himself be tugged along, even as he wonders whether Coran might be more suitable, as an alien with far more knowledge of the Galra than Pidge.

“Don’t worry, I’ve tinkered with Rover 2.1 before. And with Galra interfaces.”

Shiro nods, thinking about Rover 2.0’s unfortunate death, similar to his predecessor. Sucked out of an airlock, and not an obvious malfunction, luckily. Shiro doesn’t need his killer robot arm to malfunction any more than it already does.

It takes several hours, but with the combined efforts of Pidge and Coran (and Lance supplying him with Hunk’s stress-cooking. Shiro has to remind him he’s right-handed. The hand which is currently out of commission), they manage to isolate the artificial nerves in his hand from the energy core which powers the whole ‘sizzling bolt of energy that can cut through steel beams’ thing. Pidge installs some sort of safety latch that he can switch off to remove the insulators preventing his nerve endings from activating the weapon itself. He’s not too sure if any type of material can provide suitable insulation for a blob of menacing, fizzling, Galra magic, but then Coran runs off, muttering to himself, and returns with a box of _something_ that’s more plasma than solid material.

Shiro doesn’t really understand. He’d only been educated in the basic chemistry and physics a pilot needs to operate a spacecraft and help with analysing samples on-site. But he doesn’t sit back and doze off, watching with steely concentration as first the outer cover of his arm is removed (not with screwdrivers, but some advanced Altean tech that looks like an letter opener), then the interior of his arm puzzled over for a good few hours, before the two of them bounce up in a ‘ _Eureka!_ moment and converse to each other in what to Shiro sounds like an alien language.

He tests out the arm after they’re done, focusing up on powering up the prosthetic. Nothing happens. He _would_ think it was because he wasn’t trying hard enough, but then Shiro remembers the ease with which his hand sizzles into a purple glow whenever they’re fighting enemies.

“Thanks, guys. This seems to be working fine.”

But the tests don’t stop there – Coran lugs out a block of granite-looking material and tells him to cut it in half, and Pidge tells him to touch every single surface in the room (“Okay, Pidge, I think the tactile sensors are working fine”). Hunk walks in on him petting one of the mice.

“Oh, hey! They got your hand sorted?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, perfect – I made too much of this chowder thing; you guys want some?”

Pidge barrels it out of there with an enthusiasm Shiro doesn’t think he can rival; Coran sulks yet again at his position of head chef being taken over, and Shiro follows them out of the room, quietly flexing his hand. His appetite had disappeared with Keith’s injury, but then he sees the steaming pot of stew and the blue slices beside it that look a little like crusty bread. Maybe he’ll have some after all.

\-----

When Keith wakes it’s without fanfare – the pod deems him healed up and automatically opens one morning, when they’re all in the dining room. Shiro drops his spoon into his bowl of food goo when Keith stumbles in to join them, looking pale and worn out.

Allura is the first one to speak.

“Keith! I’m so glad you’re better – here, come take a seat.” A bowl of food goo is set in front of Keith when he sits down in the empty seat.

“Ugh – what happened? I remember being hurt…”

Pidge reflexively glances at Shiro, but thankfully, Coran shushes him. “Eat first, and then we can explain.”

Keith looks like he’d rather have answers than food, but obediently swallows down his portion of food goo anyway. Shiro can feel his heart thrumming nervously in his chest – he’s not too sure what sort of explanation he _can_ offer. Luckily, they allow him to drag Keith into a quiet corner to explain everything.

“What happened, Shiro? An attack?”

“No, I – uh – my hand accidentally turned on when I was having a nightmare – and, y’know how I always have my hand on your back…”

Keith blanches, taking a step back. “Don’t you – don’t you have control over that thing?”

“Yeah, I do – but – anyway, they helped me fix it up.” He shows Keith the safety latch. “It won’t turn on unless I flip this thing now.”

“Oh. Are you sure it works? It’s not like the Galra wanted you to stop stabbing things.” Keith turns away with a sulky look.

“It should be fine; I tested it out earlier.”

“Mm.” Keith nods. “Thanks for telling me. I’m gonna go get some training in; I’ve been in that pod for too long.”

Keith doesn’t show up in his room that night. Well, neither does Shiro, not until the lights have been off in their section of the ship for two hours. He can’t exactly sleep in Keith’s bed anymore, not when the teen needs to use it for himself now. He looks at his bed with a sigh, getting in under the covers when he can’t bear to stare at it any longer. If he just closes his eyes – he can imagine it’s not the same bed he’d wounded Keith on.

Shiro wakes up within three hours, a scream lodged in his throat. He almost considers quietly padding over to Keith’s room, before realising how much the teen _would not_ appreciate it. Shiro forces himself back into sleep.

\-----

In a probably foolish decision, Shiro knocks and lets himself into Keith’s room a half hour before lights-off the next evening. Keith looks up from scrutinising his Galra blade, and slides it under his pillow with a flinchingly quick movement. It’s in its elongated form, though, so the tip protrudes.

“It’s fine, Keith, I know about it already.”

Keith shrugs. “What are you doing here?” He adds after a beat.

“I – uh – I’m having trouble with sleeping. What with all the nightmares. I want to vomit just stepping inside my room.”

He can’t tell whether Keith looks annoyed at his presence or concerned. Shiro continues, itching to get everything out so he can just leave.

“I’m sorry about what happened; it was unconscious. And is there any chance I could join you?” He gestures awkwardly at Keith’s bed.

Keith mulls it over for a bit, taking his sword out, turning it around a few times, and reverting it to its dagger form before replacing it under his pillow. He worries at his lip.

“Yeah. Sure. I trust you.”

“You do?” Shiro asks with a hopeful note.

“Mm. J-Just, turn the safety on.”

“Of course.”

Shiro gets in as Keith stands up to switch off the lights, shifting to press himself against the wall to try and make for more space between them.

“Why’re you all the way over there?” Keith mumbles. “I don’t mind hugs.”

There’s a coiled rope of tension in both of them as Shiro wraps his arms around Keith in that familiar way, but they soon fall asleep, waking up in the morning like they did in the past. Shiro hasn’t had a better night’s sleep in a long time.

They still have problems to resolve; secrets to discuss. But for now, the experience of breathing in sync night after night is enough to soothe their shoulders into relaxed lines after weeks of fighting for their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading c:  
> comments r greatly appreciated


End file.
